Taiwan mulls compulsory autopsies in suspected flu-vaccine deaths

Dec 23, 2009, 9:04 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan plans to perform compulsory autopsies on people suspected of dying from the swine-flu vaccine, an official said Wednesday.

'Currently, the families of some people who are suspected to have died from the H1N1 vaccine do not allow us to perform an autopsy,' said Chou Chih-hao, deputy director of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC).

'To clear up public concern about the safety of the vaccine, we plan to ask the authorities to amend the law, so that we can perform autopsies on the bodies of people who are suspected of having died from the H1N1 vaccine,' he said.

Since Taiwan began vaccinations against swine flu on November 1, 787 people have been hospitalized for symptoms associated with the shots and 35 of them have died.

There have been legal disputes because some families insisted their relatives died from the vaccine while the hospitals giving the shots and the CDC insisted the deaths were unrelated to the vaccine.

So far, 4.8 million Taiwanese have been vaccinated against the H1N1 virus.

The vaccines used in Taiwan are AdimFlu-S, developed by Taiwan's Adimmune Corp, and Focetria, developed by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG.